A reader wants to know if the Cherokee Indians lived where the present-day Biltmore Estate is.

John Boyle/jboyle@citizen-times.com

GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK — For thousands of years, the Cherokee looked forward to spring in Western North Carolina, for the return of warm days, and for the blooming of sochan, a somewhat bitter spring green that grows wild in the mountain forests.

Harvesting the early growth leaflets of sochan, also known as green headed coneflower, and frying or steaming it into a vitamin-packed dish tasting something like spinach or kale, was a family tradition.

Sochan, also known as green headed coneflower, is a spring green traditionally harvested by the ...more

Sochan, also known as green headed coneflower, is a spring green traditionally harvested by the Cherokee in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, well before the park was established.

Courtesy of North Carolina Arboretum

But once the Great Smokies as established in the 1930s, the Cherokee, and everyone else, were prohibited from picking any plant or plant part, a nationwide National Park Service rule.

Tommy Cabe is the Tribal Forest Resource Specialist for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

Tommy Cabe is the Tribal Forest Resource Specialist for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

Karen Chávez/KChavez@CitizenTimes.com

The Great Smokies is proposing to enter into an agreement with the Eastern Band under 36 CFR Part 2.6, aka “Final Rule on Gathering of Certain Plants or Plant Parts by Federally Recognized Indian Tribes for Traditional Purposes,” to allow enrolled tribal members to once again harvest sochan.

“I think it’s very historic,” said Tommy Cabe, tribal forest resource specialist for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. “We used to belong to the park landscape. Some of these places where we go and collect is not just an act of gathering because it grows there, it’s a family tradition, it’s a spiritual site. It means something to us in our culture. These lands are no longer owned by us, but they still exist.”

Cabe said that in the past, the tribe has had various “gentlemen’s agreements” with the park superintendent in office at the time to allow for limited harvesting, but those were never set in stone and fell to the wayside.

“What the CFR does is it allows us to test our institutional ecological knowledge in how we harvest and utilize these plants so these native populations remain unimpacted in a negative way,” Cabe said. “The ultimate goal is it allows us to harvest, but at same time utilize an ancient traditional method that nobody has ever explored in its impact on these populations.”

That includes only harvesting the early spring leaves, only in certain places and in certain amounts. A research project with the North Carolina Arboretum found this to be a highly sustainable way to harvest the plants, which are abundant in the Smokies, Cabe said.

Changing a long-standing prohibition

Share This Gallery

Since the National Park Service was established in 1916, its mission has been to “preserves unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.”

The plant gathering rule change enacted Aug. 11, 2016, was aimed at relaxing this prohibition in limited circumstances and establishing a management framework to allow the gathering and removal of plants or plant parts by enrolled members of federally recognized Indian tribes for traditional tribal, cultural purposes, said Julena Campbell, Smokies spokeswoman.

The rule authorizes agreements between the National Park Service and federally recognized tribes that to harvest the plants as long as it does not cause a significant adverse impact to park resources.

Share This Gallery

After an Indian submits a written request to the park Superintendent for an agreement to allow tribal members to collect plants or plant parts, the superintendent has 90 days to acknowledge receipt of the request and initiate consultation with the tribe.

“We have responded, and part of the response is to go through the environmental assessment — how would this proposed action affect the park resources? Part of the EA is to ask for public comment,” Campbell said.

Public comments will be accepted through Aug. 17.

The NPS must prepare a finding of no significant impact before any plant gathering agreement may become effective, Campbell said.

Do you know how many boundary miles hug the road, how many bridges, tunnels and miles of streams cross its path, and what kinds of rare and threatened species call the parkway home?

Karen Chavez/kchavez@citizentimes.com

Joey Owle, EBCI secretary of agriculture and natural resources, said when the rule change took place in 2016, the tribe saw it as “an opportunity to re-engage our community on a landscape that we haven’t been able to harvest on for some time.”

He said how the permitting system works remains to be seen, based on the Environmental Assessment. Since harvesting in the Cherokee culture is not just one individual, but usually involves families, it might be structured to allow a certain number of family members to harvest with a permit holder.

“They will have a special bag for harvesting that will be easily identifiable and will have the set amount to be harvested,” Owle said. “And we will be doing a lot of monitoring to make sure we’re not negatively impacting the plant population.”

Other parks around the country have been implementing the rule to restore Native American traditions, including an agreement with the Tohono O'odham Nation and Saguaro National Park in Arizona to approve the gathering of saguaro cactus fruit, saguaro ribs, and cholla buds.

Share This Gallery

“We believe this a great first step to act on the rule change,” Owle said. “We hope and expect it will be successfully implemented and executed and will allow us to have a good relationship with the park and we can look to harvesting other plants that were traditionally harvested by our people, such as ramps.”

Cabe, who said sochan is one of his favorite plants — he especially likes to fry them in bacon grease — called the rule change “monumental.”

“We’re able to entertain this rule change and enact a scientific piece of our history that nobody has ever evaluated before in regards to sustainable levels of these plants,” Cabe said.

“We’ll get to go back to a landscape that we used to utilize and practice our traditional methods of harvesting, and the park will be monitoring sites and doing environmental assessments to make sure these popular of plants are sustainable. That will give the park a layer of defense if environmental groups say you shouldn’t allow this in a landscape that is solely for preservation.”

To comment on the proposed agreement, use the National Park Service’s Planning, Environment, and Public Comment website and follow the link, “Sochan Gathering for Traditional Purposes” at https://parkplanning.nps.gov/grsm or by U.S. Mail to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, ATTN: Environmental Planning and Compliance, 107 Park Headquarters Road, Gatlinburg, TN 37738.